In the space of just four hours last week two different friends mentioned to me the article “Complications of the Ukraine War” by Christopher Caldwell in Hillsdale College’s monthly newsletter, Imprimis. Complications of the Ukraine War | Imprimis (hillsdale.edu). I perk up at those kinds of coincidences, and I’d already read the article, which lays out several reasons why Mr. Caldwell believes the United States is significantly responsible for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, due to our past...
When our astronauts landed on the moon in July, 1969, I was a 22 year old graduate student at London School of Economics on a one month language study in Leningrad, USSR. While our student group was there, we saw all the deprivations of the Soviet command economy, and we also saw young people beaten up by the KGB simply for talking with our group. Twenty-five years later the commercial real estate industry launched in Russia, and I participated. Fast forward to the early 2000’s, when Russia...
This week in August marks the Fiftieth Anniversary of two events in the tumultuous year of 1968 which had a lasting impact on my life: The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21st, and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 26th. I had just graduated from UNC and turned 21. What follows is a personal post, using mostly my own photos. The Warsaw Pact countries invaded Prague that week because the Czech leadership had dared to give their citizens a few freedoms...
A nation that fractures along identity politics boundaries is almost certainly doomed. When Lenin and Trotsky started their rebellion against the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky in St. Petersburg, Russia in November, 1917, they expected to be arrested and sent into exile, as had always happened before. Instead, a few days later, much to their surprise, they were in control of the capital and, soon, the nation. What happened? The Bolsheviks were prepared to use violence to get...
For a conservative who believes in Rule of Law, the Ukrainian Crisis presents a choice between several bad alternatives. What Putin is doing to destabilize and potentially annex a second part of Ukraine is clearly a violation of international law, and is unacceptable behavior. Viewed from that static perspective, the clear answer is to arm the Ukrainians with weapons, and assist them to defend their people and their territory. It makes sense. But, like a chess match, one has to look beyond...
In the summer of 1969 at age twenty-two I attended a month-long Russian language school with other British university students, first in the center of Leningrad, and then at a “camp of organized rest” on the Finnish Gulf. We experienced the KGB-induced fear among the local students, who would only speak to us in designated areas with official approval, unless we could contrive a meeting on the relative anonymity of the beach. Still, some of them were beaten by the local enforcers of state...
Besides being Labor Day in the U.S., today is the 75th Anniversary of the start of World War II. Six years later, in 1945, over 60 million men, women and children had been horrifically killed by world powers, partisans, and their own governments. That works out to 27,400 people killed every day for six years. In a “civilized” world, and in the living memory of many today. The trigger for the start was Germany’s invasion of Poland on a trumped up border dispute. The seeds of the war were...
I don’t usually engage in “what if?”, but in this case the results are so striking that I have to do so. Daniel Greenfield has written a scathing critique of Presidents Obama and Putin at frontpagemag.com. I commend his analyis and conclusions to you. Here is his description of these two men's arrogant approach to every opportunity. "If you can do something, you do it. If your opponents can’t stop you, then you have the right to do it. The true radical, the man of destiny, will do anything...
Last weekend I attended a Marshall Scholar event in Washington. The Scholarship was establishd in 1954 by the British government as a thank you to the American people for the Marshall Plan after World War II. On Sunday I walked down to the World War II Memorial. Etched on one of the walls is a visionary statement by General George Marshall, who ran the U.S. Army during the entire war. As Secretary of State he then authored the plan by which the US stayed in place and rebuilt Europe’s...
A recent event causes me to write again about a subject which I first posted on in September, 2010: The Russians and Us. Having lived and worked in Moscow on and off for twenty-two years, last month’s end to our Cathedrals in the Kremlincompany’s five year joint venture development of a modern office building was a bitter-sweet event. This project was the most complicated but rewarding undertaking of my first forty years in real estate. Primarily because our Russian partners are...
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